We Are Not Death Eaters
by Fayanora
Summary: Not all Slytherins are Death Eaters. Most aren't, in fact. And many Slytherins are just as brave as Griffindors. Our narrator, one such Slytherin, relates a tale of being in a group of anti-Voldemort Slytherins, explaining why there were no Slytherins in Dumbledore's Army, and where they were during the final Battle of Hogwarts.


"We Are Not Death Eaters"

By = Fayanora

**Disclaimer: **This is J. K. Rowling's world, not mine.

Story type:

**Provisos:** Original characters

**Author's Note:** I've left gender indicators out of the narrator's narrative, even left out zir name, so you can imagine zie is whatever gender you want zir to be.

**Summary:** Not all Slytherins are Death Eaters. Most aren't, in fact. And many Slytherins are just as brave as Griffindors. Our narrator, one such Slytherin, relates a tale of being in a group of anti-Voldemort Slytherins, explaining why there were no Slytherins in Dumbledore's Army, and why it seemed as though no Slytherins fought in the Battle of Hogwarts.

I remember well my first day at Hogwarts. I was nervous and scared like everyone else. My mother's words to me before the train still echoed in my head, "Now dear, you'll hear some very bad things about our house from others, I expect, and meet some unpleasant people there. Some will say that all the dark wizards of Britain have always been Slytherins, but it isn't true. I'm a history scholar, and can assure you that Ravenclaw, Griffindor, and even Hufflepuff have churned out unpleasant and even evil people, too. Just because our house is currently popular with a lot of unpleasant people doesn't mean the house is inherently evil. Now you go and you show them that Slytherins can be good people, too. We are not all death eaters."

These words bolstered me as I sat on the stool and the Sorting Hat practically drowned my head, as I heard it shout "Slytherin!" and took my seat to cheers from them and boos from the other three houses. I held my head up high, and proud. Slytherins are proud, Slytherins are cunning, Slytherins are sly.

In the first few weeks, though, I came to find that not everyone fits their house perfectly or, really, at all. There were spineless cowards in Griffindor, lazy and unfriendly people in Hufflepuff, people in Ravenclaw who _were_ technically nerds but were not very bright (like one muggle-born fellow who obsessed endlessly about a game called "baseball" and had memorized thousands of pages of stats, but could hardly stand a cauldron the right way up), and Slytherins who had the cunning of a concussed troll.

It didn't take long to find out who the worst of my house were. Draco Malfoy was the worst kind of spoiled rotten racist scumbag I had ever met, he practically worshiped Voldemort, and bullied Harry Potter and his friends every chance that he got. His cronies, Crabbe and Goyle, had the collective intelligence of half a dead flobberworm, and I had a hard time telling which end of Pansy Parkinson was her face. But aside from a few other unpleasant people, most of whom were jocks, most of my fellow Slytherins were pretty nice.

I would like to have been able to say that I told Potter that not all Slytherins are bad; I was willing to risk being the target of Malfoy's lot to tell him this. However, Potter had made up his mind about Slytherins and had nearly jinxed me in the hall when I tried to give him my support. I told my friends about the encounter, and I'm sad to say they had no more luck than I did.

Yes, I almost forgot; that first year I made half a dozen friends, other Slytherins who felt as I did, some in my year and others in higher-up years. One was even a prefect. I was glad to have these friends. My luck making friends in other houses was not good. There were a few Hufflepuffs that seemed to like me, but Griffindors seemed to hate all Slytherins on principle, and Ravenclaws didn't seem to want to mingle with us either, though I suspect in that case it was more because they cared what the Griffindors thought.

Still, as much as I wanted other houses to recognize that there were good Slytherins, I have to say I was very angry, as were my friends, when Dumbledore stole the house cup away from us because of Harry Potter's fight with Voldemort. Yes, it was brave and all, and my friends and I had been just as amazed and delighted by it as people in other houses, but well... Potter and his friends had lost their house points and should not have been given those points back at the last instant. Give Potter a medal or a trophy for special services to the school, but we won that cup fair and square, and the headmaster just stole it out from under us.

I had the whole summer to get over the indignity of it, though. It took me until the last week to do so, especially with mum being enraged as well. I understand she sent the headmaster several angry letters, even a howler, about it. And I suppose I'm still not really over it, but oh well.

That second year was very dark days, very dark indeed. Salazar Slytherin's heir was sending his monster all about the school. Some Slytherins felt safe, protected by their house status, but my growing group of friends and I didn't. My father was muggle-born, and some of my friends were muggle-born as well. We had all learned very quickly to pretend otherwise. We half-bloods protected the muggle-borns, gave them secret Wizard Studies classes so they could better bluff the racists in the school. We didn't want any of our friends targeted, and didn't trust Slytherin's heir to not attack members of his own house.

And then Potter spoke parseltongue, and I was one of many who thought he was the Heir of Slytherin. I worried, because I had told Potter in our first year that I wasn't a muggle-hater, so I was sure he would target us. It seems absurd, thinking back on it, but literally all I knew of Potter was that he had fought Voldemort and that he had rebuffed me and my friends. Oh, and that he had been raised by very abusive muggles. And let's be honest, it's a wonder – given those circumstances – that he turned out as good a person as he did. My fears were justified, given what I knew.

It wasn't until the Granger girl was attacked that I found out she was a muggle-born. I'd known she was Potter's friend, and hearing that she was a muggle-born, and that most people had known this from the start, made me relax. Potter wouldn't hang around a muggle-born if he hated muggles.

And then he did it again; fought Voldemort. Or so the rumors said. It was hard to figure out what was really going on, when we hadn't been there. I didn't know which rumors to believe and which to not. But the heir seemed defeated; there were no more attacks, and the school did not close down.

In my third year, the murderer Sirius Black escaped Azkaban, and came to the school. Dementors searched the train and were stationed by the school entrances. My mum almost didn't let me go to school, she was so worried. Dad convinced her to let me go, in the end. Still, when those dementors came onto the Quidditch pitch and nearly killed Potter, my mum almost had me taken out of school. The times Sirius Black got into the castle shook her up, too. I was mildly worried by Black, but not too much so, for he seemed to be targeting Griffindor. And I remember thinking it was odd he slashed the painting that guarded Griffindor Tower when nobody was in there. Others reckoned he didn't know what the date was, but I wasn't so sure. If he was cunning enough to sneak out of Azkaban when it was said to be impossible, then sneak all the way down to Hogwarts, into the castle, and not get caught, it seemed unlikely he would let such an important detail as dates and times slip his notice. No, I reckoned whatever he wanted was in the tower but was not one of the students. I never did figure out what he'd been looking for, though, or why he gave up. Okay, sure, he got caught and escaped again, but why leave and not come back? Supposedly he was in London during our fifth year, but it was one sighting and nothing was heard from him again until he died in the Ministry; died fighting Death Eaters, in fact. So it seemed he'd been innocent all along. My mum informed me, after his death, that he'd never been given a trial. No wonder they made a mistake.

My friends and I were disappointed that Quidditch was canceled my fourth year. Most were pleased at the Tri-Wizard Tournament being played, but I agreed with my mum, that such a dangerous game was best left to the distant past. Between that and the Dark Mark being set in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, mum again had to be convinced to let me go back to school; she kept muttering for weeks that Hogwarts had never been this dangerous when **she** had been at school.

Even though he had rebuffed my friends and I, I still felt worried for Potter when his name came up as a fourth champion. I saw the look on his face from where I sat, and I also knew that only a powerful dark wizard could have bamboozled the goblet of fire, because my mom said as much in a letter to me a couple days later. I doubt Potter noticed that neither me nor my friends wore Malfoy's stupid "Potter Stinks" badges. He has been just as prejudiced as Malfoy, in his own way. Still, none of us believed anything Rita Skeeter said about him, either, even though Malfoy's lot and various Malfoy wannabes were quoting her articles to him every chance they got.

And then Voldemort came back. Potter had come back clutching Cedric Diggory's body. There was confusion and panic. Rumors flew. And later, Dumbledore told us all what had happened. Because I didn't believe Rita Skeeter, I believed Dumbledore and Harry.

My parents were infuriated by the Daily Prophet having a go at him and Dumbledore at every opportunity. My dad said if he'd wanted to read such trash, he'd be reading either the Daily Mail, Sun, or one of those other rags. Mum worried about Voldemort again, and again it took Dad some weeks to convince her to let me come back for my fifth year. I almost wish he hadn't. Voldemort was still an abstract threat at that point, but the stupid ministry had given us a seriously unpleasant woman in the form of Dolores Umbridge. Her classes were utterly worthless, the book she assigned was duller than watching flobberworm races, and she was so foul she made Argus Filch look like a kindly gentleman in comparison.

I can honestly say the only thing I ever agreed with Malfoy on was that Rubeus Hagrid should have stuck to being gamekeeper. Still, Umbridge's treatment of him, especially when he was badly wounded by something, made me furious. I kept quiet, lest Malfoy's lot turned on me, but still I was enraged. It didn't surprise me later when I read that Umbridge became the head of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission under Voldemort's rule. I hope that got her prison time after Voldemort was killed.

One of my friends had overheard a conversation between a Griffindor and a Ravenclaw that year, in which a secret organization called Dumbledore's Army had been created to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts, since Umbridge's lessons were worse than useless. Hating her as much as they did, and hating the ministry for being stupid fools for not believing Dumbledore, we tried to join. But nobody in the DA trusted us. In fact, they looked concerned that we knew about it at all. They don't seem to have informed Potter or his friends about it, though. I can't blame them, really, with all the unpleasant people in our House. Heck, a few of my friends had parents who had been Death Eaters, though they disagreed with their parents about it.

Being once more rebuffed, my friends and I – who now numbered almost two dozen – formed our own secret defense association. We named it Dumbledore's Cavalry. In a feat of information gathering that was simply astonishing, Gavin informed us that he had asked Moaning Myrtle if she knew how to get into the Chamber of Secrets. It took us a few tries to mimic the hissing and spitting she had overheard, and we feared she had misheard it or couldn't say it right, but finally we got in there. We saw all the bones, the dead basilisk, its fangs, and everything; we decided to leave them be, in case they were needed some day, but we did move the basilisk's remains so we'd have the statue's room clear, and magically scrubbed the place down. It was difficult all going in there when the entrance was in a girl's loo, with a few disillusionment charms, some quiet sneaking about, and Slytherin's Head Boy and Head Girl being in our group, we had no problem sneaking out at night and practicing self-defense in the Chamber, then sneaking back. In fact, we were never found out, while Potter's group was. I still giggle sometimes at the thought of what Salazar would have said if he'd known his Chamber was being used by a group that opposed his Heir.

Dumbledore took the blame for the DA, and nobody in the DA was expelled, but they stopped meeting. We in the DC thought about inviting some of them to join our group, but between being constantly scorned and the worry that Umbridge was still watching the DA's members for signs of re-forming, we decided not to. We just quietly carried on.

After Potter and his friends fought the Death Eaters in the ministry, and Voldemort himself was spotted there by the minister, suddenly the ministry stopped being so stupid. We of the DC redoubled our efforts, knowing Voldemort's plans would change now he was exposed. So while the DA failed to re-form in the sixth year, Dumbledore's Cavalry kept practicing. It became a little harder, because Malfoy kept turning up in the loo we needed, talking with Moaning Myrtle, but we managed. It helped that some of us knew spells to detect if anyone was in the loo before exiting the Chamber, and _colloportus_ kept people out of the loo when we were down in the Chamber, so detection wasn't much of an issue anyway.

Danzia, a third-year who had almost ended up in Ravenclaw, outshone even Hermione Granger by not only giving us our own version of the fake galleons the DA used, but also teaching us spells like _salvia hexia, protego totallum, _and the muggle-repelling charm in case it was ever needed. She had even managed to find spells the like of which would be cast by the teachers before the Battle of Hogwarts in our seventh year, things that we NEWT standard, and even a few that you only ever heard about at special colleges of magic, like Alfard Noxin's Academy of Advanced Magical Sciences, which was to Hogwarts as Oxford is to elementary school. Apparently Danzia's parents were both professors there, and she had access to their books. She was one of the few who managed to do any of the Noxin spells in that year, however. Some of those spells made _Expecto Patronum_ look like child's play. I'll admit that I still haven't figured any of them out; half of them, I don't even comprehend the theory!

It was a terrible day when Dumbledore fell from the astronomy tower, and all those death eaters broke in. We were all down in the Chamber when it began, and by the time Moaning Myrtle informed us what was going on and we got there, the fighting was almost over. We got in some action at the tail end, however. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone in either the Order or what was left of the DA noticed us in the chaos.

Mom was not alone, in my seventh year, in not wanting us to go back to Hogwarts with no Dumbledore, and Voldemort gaining power steadily all the time. Even Dad had misgivings. But then the Ministry fell, Dolores Umbridge headed the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, and dad – who refused to register as a muggle-born – had to flee for his life. Mom wanted to go, and wanted to take me with them, but Dad insisted we stay behind. We were both protected by our blood status, after all; mom being a pure-blood and I a half-blood. I'll admit I cried when he left, I was so scared for him. I just knew it would be the last time I'd see him alive.

Hogwarts attendance now being mandatory, and protected by my blood status, I boarded the train with dread and fear. Nearly a third of the DC was gone, now, with so many secret muggle-borns having left the country with their families. Snape, who everyone said had killed Dumbledore, was headmaster – the first Slytherin headmaster since Phineus Nigelus. It made me sick to my stomach that a Death Eater – as I thought him to be at the time – was given that honor, when there had to be dozens of better qualified Slytherins for the job.

I wasn't the tiniest bit surprised that Potter and Granger had not turned up for their final year. I assumed Hermione had left the country with her parents, as so many had done already. And Potter had a ten-thousand galleon price on his head; he would have been mad to turn up. But Ron Weasley being missing, too, when he was a pure-blood? The rumor was he had spattergroit, but I wasn't fooled, unlike the Death Eaters. I knew he was out there, somewhere, with Potter. Potter had lost his parents, his godfather, and the closest thing he'd ever had to a grandfather (Dumbledore) to Voldemort, so I knew he would be out there resisting; I would have done, in his place. And I was right; we heard later about his break-in at the ministry, and later his breaking into Gringotts, of all places, and actually managing to get away!

Dumbledore's Cavalry was still meeting secretly. We heard that Dumbledore's Army had re-formed at last. Well, it wasn't difficult, as they were being about as subtle as a train wreck, doing things like painting "Dumbledore's Army now recruiting" all over the walls of the school. Other actions were almost as blatant, like refusing point-blank to torture first-years during Dark Arts class. We in the DC had to be more subtle, lest we were discovered. Unforgivable curses are not easy to do, so we all just pretended we were trying but unable to get anything to happen.

Since you had to have a good blood status to even attend Hogwarts, we figured the Carrows and Snape wouldn't want to kill anyone, so unlike the DA, we didn't risk freeing people being punished, even though we desperately wanted to. Our resistance would be more subtle. And besides, we were mostly biding our time. We suspected that Potter would fight Voldemort face to face eventually. Danzia had a pretty good theory about Voldemort, that explained how he'd survived the backfiring curse that Potter was famous for, and come back to full life. One of the books Danzia brought with her was about something called a horcrux, which could keep a wizard from dying. They were... nasty things, horcruxes. It sickened me to think he had even one, and Danzia said that Voldemort's inhuman features made her suspect he had at least three of them. She had no idea what any of them were, and one person in the group expressed a worrying thought; what if one of them was a plain old pebble dropped into the ocean? But Voldemort as a weak spirit would still be better than as a human.

Anyway, I mention all this because Voldemort was the Heir of Slytherin, so there might be a horcrux hidden in the Chamber of Secrets, which meant Harry Potter would have to return to the school at some point. And if Voldemort somehow found out about it... well, it seemed prudent to prepare for a battle. We had no idea how long it would take Potter to do it. Dumbledore was surely clever enough to have told Harry all about the horcruxes and help him figure out what they were, even if we didn't know. It could have been years, though, for all we knew, but we planned as though it could happen at any time, and planned also to keep Dumbledore's Cavalry going for as long as need be.

Getting in and out of the Chamber of Secrets was made more difficult by the increased security. A colloportused door would have looked suspicious, and Myrtle's loo had a fairly public entrance. Even disillusionment charms were unlikely to work well enough, especially since a door opening itself would look suspicious. Luckily Danzia, having studied a map of Hogwarts she'd acquired from her parents, discovered that the Chamber wasn't far, distance-wise, from the Slytherin common room. Using a series of spells that were incredibly complicated, she managed to create a pair of secret doors in the boys' and girls' dormitories that lead right to the Chamber, and for extra security gave them the same dependency on parseltongue as the original entrance. Took her weeks to manage it, and she exhausted herself doing it, but it still got done, and it was a boon.

We of the DC did more than just bide our time, though. With the DA attracting attention to itself all the time, some of our members disillusioned themselves and secretly freed some of those in punishment, actions which were attributed to the DA. This suited us fine. We had gotten by for two years previously on cunning and secrecy. Let the DA be showy and obnoxious, like a roaring lion; we Slytherins would slide through the shadows and the insides of walls like a serpent. Let the DA charge into battle roaring; we would sneak up behind our enemies and sting them, getting away before they even knew they were dead.

About halfway through the year, my mother sent me a message, informing me that my father's body had been found; he'd been murdered by Death Eaters. I nearly lost myself to grief, crying myself to sleep for weeks, before I started to slowly transmute my pain into rage, and a furious desire for revenge. I understood Harry Potter more now than ever before, and I eagerly awaited the day Potter turned up, so I could fight Voldemort and watch him die, or take up Potter's place if he failed.

When Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger finally did turn up at Hogwarts looking for something of Ravenclaw's – probably a horcrux, Danzia figures – one of our spies informed us at once, and we prepared for battle. The heads-up was nice, even though it wasn't long before Voldemort's horrible, magically-magnified voice echoed through the school.

Some of us went into battle with disillusionment charms on themselves, for it's hard to hit a target you can't see. Others, not wanting to take the risk of being hit by friendly fire that way, instead just shed all signs of what house we belonged to. Nothing green or silver on any of us, in that final battle, for we didn't trust the students of other houses to believe we were on their side. And in the chaos of battle preparation, I doubt any of the teachers noticed a few dozen missing Slytherins. Which was good, because most of us were ignoring McGonagall's restriction against underage fighters.

We went in wearing shield hats or shield cloaks to deflect some of what would be flying about, and Danzia added some protection spells from her parents' books, to the castle. Some would undoubtedly overlap those of the teachers, but those spells would simply reinforce each other.

Going by our battle plan, some of us went to the different towers to lob spells down at invading Death Eaters, Danzia being the one to go up to the top of North Tower, seeing as she was the strongest and cleverest spell-caster among us. I started out at one of the towers as well, firing green Killing Curses down at the bastards who allied themselves with Voldemort. We had decided not to use anything fatal if they got into the castle, in case one of the spells hit an ally, but while they were out there behind the shield the teachers and Danzia had conjured, it was safe to kill as many of the scumbags as we could hit.

Those of us on the towers also conjured trebuchets and cannons with our wands, for Danzia had provided us with great piles of simple Muggle-designed bombs that exploded on impact. She had conjured them with magic, and they were a simple enough design that the magic of Hogwarts would not interfere with them. I still wonder if anyone noticed those, in all the chaos. It was fun watching them explode, killing Death Eaters; even some of the ones that got blasted out of the air rained shrapnel down on them. And when we ran out of cannon shells, we did things like summon containers of alcohol from the kitchens, sending Molotov cocktails out at the Death Eaters, or flung conjured rocks at them. A few crafty people even used their wands to set the rocks aflame before shooting them away into the night. I don't know how many Death Eaters were killed by our cannon fire, but we all cheered when one of the giants got a cannon shell right to the head and crashed violently to the ground with a great thunderous noise. Another one later got hit by several Molotov Cocktails and ran away screaming, half his body on fire.

When the Death Eaters broke in at last, I was one of those who went down as fast as I could to fight them in person. I wanted to kill every Death Eater I could. I passed Professor Sprout and Neville Longbottom carrying mandrakes as I did, and even saw Potter out of the corner of my eye, speeding off to do gods-know-what. The whole castle shook, then, from one of our bombs exploding a bit too close to the castle, which knocked a massive vase off its plinth.

I got to the entrance hall and started firing off spells at Death Eaters. It was absolute bedlam, to be honest, and I can't recall it well enough to do it justice. But everywhere there were people fighting, dodging spells from both sides, and I was very glad to see that nobody on Hogwarts' side had recognized me as a Slytherin.

About the only thing I do remember clearly for about half an hour at least of the fighting was spells coming from nowhere to hit the Death Eaters. But unlike we visible fighters, who were slinging whatever we could think of as fast as we could, these were calculated strikes by DC members hidden by disillusionment charms so powerful that they were invisible even when they ran. But mostly they were sneaking about, picking their targets carefully, like professional snipers. Some even struck out with basilisk fangs taken from the Chamber of Secrets, since the basilisk seemed to have shed hundreds of the things during its lifetime. I was impressed, but didn't linger on it, as I was too busy.

It was a pretty good stalemate for a while, before the enemy started to gain ground. Reinforcements from the DC came in to help, just in time for enormous acromantulas to burst in. Where they had come from, we didn't know, but had no time to speculate. We just lobbed everything we thought would help at them, hoping to slow them down at least. Someone conjured a brick wall out of nowhere, and – inspired by this, no doubt – another started conjuring anvils to hit the giant spiders. I conjured fire, myself, figuring correctly that the light and heat would scare them. But it didn't slow them down for long. Despite all our best efforts, I witnessed one of the monsters break through and drag Gavin off into the night. I tried to chase after him, but other spiders crowded me, and it was all I could do to keep them off of me. Just then, someone went whizzing by me at top speed. Another person followed, but while the first person got away, the second hit a tapestry and, strangely, went thud, as though it were a wall.

A few minutes later the spiders were dead, but more Death Eaters came through. The ground shook as what sounded like a pair of giants fought outside, which knocked over one of the Death Eaters, and I slashed my wand at him as he struggled; he fell down, gurgling, and did not get up again.

The next several minutes, possibly a quarter hour, passed by in a blur of constant fighting. I was starting to get exhausted. Before the battle had ended, I ducked into a hidden nook and disillusioned myself so I could fight at a slower pace, and spent the next few minutes as a sniper, hitting Death Eaters with stunning spells, and then using the Killing Curse on them when they were down, so they wouldn't rejoin the battle.

At last, Voldemort called a temporary truce, calling for Harry to give himself up, and once I was done finishing off fallen Death Eaters, I un-cast the disillusionment charm and joined the people who were tending to the dead and wounded. As I did so, I tried not to think of what would happen if Harry didn't go to Voldemort. Or of what would happen if he did.

An hour passed, and when we weren't helping the wounded or moving corpses, we rested. Rested, and wondered what Potter was doing. I managed to speak with Danzia. She was trying to find out who among us was still alive. A few members of Dumbledore's Cavalry had died, others were wounded. Several were missing in action. I wanted to sleep for a week straight, but I couldn't. Even if Voldemort dropped dead in front of my very eyes, there was too much left to do before that.

The hour passed, and more. Still Voldemort did not say anything, and the Death Eaters had not returned. Danzia and I were standing in the front entrance, looking for signs of enemy activity.

"Do you think it's over already?" asked Danzia, sounding hopeful.

"I doubt it."

I would have said more, but I heard a distant roar from the Forbidden Forest. It sounded like a giant. I tensed up, wondering what was going on. We continued to wait. The minutes dragged by. I heard anxious mutterings and hopeful words in equal measure.

At last, we saw a procession coming down from the forest, and the bottom fell out of my stomach. It was Voldemort and some of his minions, pulling Hagrid along. And Hagrid, weeping, was carrying the dead body of Harry Potter. He had failed. He faced Voldemort and had failed at last. My rage flared up. I didn't care how long it took, I would get my revenge on Voldemort. I wished, then, that I could know if the bastard was mortal yet again or not.

Voldemort made a gloating speech, and even I could tell he was lying. Funny thing that: the world's most accomplished legilimens – who always insisted on honesty from anyone he interrogated – was also the world's most accomplished liar.

McGonagall made a scream of despair when she saw Potter's body, and Bellatrix Lestrange laughed mockingly at her, which made my rage boil more. Voldemort put Harry at his feet, mocking him, and I had to resist the urge to fight him.

Voldemort was trying to demoralize us, but he was failing. Neville Longbottom, who had headed the re-formed DA, defied him, heartening us all. The Death Eaters tortured and mocked him, and I worried he would die. But then a phoenix dropped the Sorting Hat on Neville. He put it on, and Voldemort set it on fire. But instead of dying, Neville pulled the sword of Griffindor out of it and – for reasons unknown – killed Voldemort's snake. It was beautiful! So beautiful I laughed at Voldemort's rage. All Hell broke loose, then, with all kinds of creatures coming in from elsewhere, and fighting broke out again. Someone shouted "Where's Harry?" which made me look and realize Potter wasn't there anymore. I wondered if he was still alive, somehow.

Reinforcements poured into the grounds, and I recognized some of them as old DC members who had left school in previous years. Even the house elves of Hogwarts joined the fray, and that's when I started losing track of what was going on. I simply did all I could to stay alive, and take as many Death Eaters down as I could.

How long the battle raged, I don't know. Bellatrix Lestrange, Voldemort's right hand woman, died at the unlikely wand of Molly Weasley, which was pretty cool. But eventually the fighting stopped again, as Voldemort and Harry Potter faced each other, circling and talking at each other until the sun began to rise. Tension filled the air as we all waited to see what would happen. It took a very long time, or felt so anyway, before the two of them struck in unison, and we witnessed Voldemort being killed by his own spell once again. His body hit the ground with a very final-sounding thud. In life, he had seemed enormous and terrifying. In death, he looked like a dead child with Progeria, only ten times worse.

Cheering broke out, celebrations reigned. I indulged some of it for a few minutes, but there was something I wanted to do. I needed to look closely at Voldemort.

I walked up to his cold, shriveled corpse. I looked into the dead eyes of that heartless monster, the ugly bastard who had ordered my father killed. I stood there, staring, for several minutes as the hatred in my soul boiled and purred at the same time. Then, surprising myself, I stomped on his ugly face, stomped it into a bloody pulp, ripped at his robes with my bare hands, then grabbed my wand and slashed with it to make his ugly head fall off. Wherever we go after we die, I hoped Voldemort would be in agony for a very, _very_ long time.

But it was over. It was all over. The ministry was retaken by the Order of the Phoenix, the Death Eaters were rounded up, and life began to move slowly towards peace. But no matter how peaceful it got for most, for others there would be no peace. My mother was never the same after my father's death. She put on a brave face most of the time, but she insisted I live nearby, and stay over in my old room sometimes. And whenever I did, I could hear her crying herself to sleep at night. For her, the war would never truly be over.

The End.


End file.
